Life, Writing, Weirdness

I don’t really do new year’s resolutions, since I don’t really regard the new year as anything other than the completely arbitrary point where the calendar turns over. There’s no reason a resolution, which I should specify as a goal instead, can’t start any time. But I’m sort of trying one this year.

And I’ve technically ignored the January 1^st piece anyway since I’ve already started, but here it is.

Social media is for professional purposes only.

Aside from the fact that most of time it’s a time sink at best and a cesspool at worst, I feel better in general when I’m not partaking in social media. Your mileage may certainly vary, but I find my mood is better when social media isn’t part of my regular activities, and so is my productivity across the board.

I’ve done social media diets or breaks before, and up to several months long, but this won’t be quite the same thing. I’m going to allow its use in my life for what I’m calling professional purposes and I’m breaking that down into three areas:

1. Academics
2. Writing
3. Genealogy

Okay, that last is a bit of a stretch for the word “professional” as I’m by no means a professional genealogist. But I have a couple of very targeted online groups that fit into this area that I’m not willing to give up. As for the first two, there are certain activities in my study area that essentially require use of a certain service to stay in contact with people doing similar work or managing the platforms I use in my research, and I need to be able to be contactable and have some kind of presence as a writer. Bluesky stays and becomes active again. Discord stays, specifically for the data centre. Otherwise, things become messaging apps. Doomscrolling and content surfing are over – that’s the goal, and the challenge. Most of it has already been deleted from my phone. I have a bit of saved content I want to make sure I harvest, but there’s no rush for most of it.

Seen in the right perspective, social media is both the best thing and the worst thing to happen to the internet, and possibly to society in general. It’s definitely put us in better and more contact with people we once would have lost that contact with. Equally certain, it’s shrunk reasoned and intelligent public discourse, and the particular styles of both capitalism and democracy that American culture tends to follow leave it open to abuse and manipulation, and the rest of us have to suffer along with that. I don’t feel the need to suffer anymore.

Be well, everyone.